The following photos and story were provided by Chris Vick. He is one of our Team Members. He is very dedicated and experienced at dissecting, documenting and rebuilding cars. He has volunteered to share his hard work and findings with us. I hope you find this entertaining and useful.

Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Chris Vick and I hail from Minnesota and yes we do have some rare cars up here, just not as many. Most rusted away, like what my Cale car tried real hard to do. Now if you own a clean repainted longnose car, you are one of the lucky ones. My car was a total rust bucket, what was not replaced was the roof, rockers, rear package tray area and the rear wheel wells. So in the process of trying to build a concours car everything had to be changed. In the process I have learned a lot about how these cars were built. Follow along as I share how Ford built these cars. Somethings are easy to understand and some reasoning has to be used to come to a conclusion.

Lets start off with how they were painted. It has been introduced here before but let me expand on what was already discussed. One thing I learned about Ford is never say never and never say always, just when you think you know it all, something comes around to bite you on the ass. A lot a talk about the cars being painted all red/blue then masked off and the white was painted has been brought up, but at some point the bean counters asked how to cut cost on all this paint, so at some point just the tops were painted then masked off and then the white was done. My car is a very late car, last car registered and that is how mine was done. Here is a photo of what I found by accident while preparing the core support for replacement.

You can see the words spoiler and TOP written on top of the primer under the black. I was sanding to find the spot welds for drilling and this mark came up. So, if you stand back and think about this mark it tells the painter that it is going to be a spoiler and that only the top is going to be painted the first go around. Finding this mark is just plain luck, Team Member Tom Wilson, knows of another car with this same mark. My guess is not many car owners are going to let someone sand on their car to find more of these. Unrestored cars are so hard to find.

Next up are some paint gobbers I found on top of the package tray.

Look at the blue tape arrows pointing at some white spots, my guess is that they are from the masking covering the roof. The top was painted red, then masked off, and the white was painted. Well, at some point all that tape and paper has to be peeled off, it looks to me they rolled it all up in a ball and stuffed it in the back window on the package tray and that thick white paint is from the masking tape. Safer than trying to pull it over a fresh white paint job? Could be.

While we are on the roof, here are some pics of how poorly the masking job was. Would you accept this on your restored car?

This last shot is of how bad of a day it must have been when this car was done, look at the lousy job on the door, it should go to the weather strip line, must have been a beer day

Hope you found this interesting, there is lots more that I will bet you have not seen.

One very important rule I go by in the restoration world, the only thing that is truly right is what you find on YOUR car. Document what you find. Please feel free to share if you something otherwise.

About the Author: Some of my first and strongest memories from my childhood relate to cars. I still remember when things happened based on what car I was driving at the time. I grew up and lived in Iowa for nearly 40 years before moving to Southern California and now live in Tennessee. I was a Corvette fanatic for years but then re-discovered vintage American Muscle. My wife, Katrina, and I decided we wanted to focus on unique and rare muscle cars. After a lot of research we fell in love with the Ford Blue Oval Aero Cars. These were only built in 1969 and and aerodynamics became an important part of winning races. The only purpose of these limited production cars was to win NASCAR races using the Boss 429 and 427 power plants complimented with a special, wind cheating, aerodynamic body. The Ford Talladega and Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II are terrific and historic cars. This site is devoted to these car and their owners past and present. We provide an Online Registry for recording the long term history and ownership of every remaining Talladega, Spoiler and Spoiler II.